Curtain walls are generally used and applied in modern building constructions and are the outer covering of said constructions in which the outer walls are non-structural, but merely keep the weather out and the occupants in. Curtain walls are usually made of a lightweight material, reducing construction costs and weight. When glass is used as the curtain wall, a great advantage is that natural light can penetrate deeper within the building.
Due to the recent developments on the building construction market, the outer fagade of a building (curtain wall fagade) will be either assembled piece by piece directly on the jobsite, or assembled using pre-fabricated unitized panels, thereby requiring at the same time sufficient fire-, smoke-, sound- and/or water-stopping in the created safing slot. A process for installing sufficient fire-, smoke-, sound- and/or water-stopping is highly desirable that is quick and clean when a stick build curtain wall fagade or unitized panel fagade is assembled. Further, this process should ensure the quality of fire-, smoke-, sound- and/or water-protection that is required according to various standards. In particular, this process should be applicable for all types of curtain wall structures, such as curtain wall structures having a common curtain wall design including a foil-faced curtain wall insulation, a steel back pan design or which include glass, especially vision glass extending to the finished floor level below.
The gap between the floor and the interior wall surface of a curtain wall defines a safing slot, also referred to as perimeter slab edge (void) or perimeter joint, extending between the interior wall surface of the curtain wall construction and the outer edge of the floor. This safing slot is essential to slow the passage of fire and combustion gases between floors. Therefore, it is of great importance to improve fire-, smoke-, sound- and/or water-stopping at the safing slot in order to keep heat, smoke, flames, noise and/or water from spreading from one floor to an adjacent floor.
Due to the increasingly strict requirements regarding fire-resistance as well as horizontal and vertical movement, there is a need for a dynamic, thermally and acoustically insulating and sealing system that can be easily installed in a curtain wall structure and is capable of meeting or exceeding existing fire test and building code requirements and standards including existing exceptions and which can be easily installed and minimizes the materials used on the jobsite. In particular, there is a need for a system that when installed during the building up the curtain wall fagade, prevents the spread of fire when vision glass of a curtain wall structure extends to the finished floor level below even when exposed to certain movements (complying with the requirements for a class IV movement).
Moreover, there is a need for systems that improve fire-resistance as well as sound-resistance, and have at the same time enhanced water-stopping properties and can be easily integrated during installation of the curtain wall structure. In particular, there is a need for a process to install a dynamic, fire-resistance-rated thermally insulating and sealing systems within a dynamic curtain wall fagade that additionally address water infiltration as well as inhibition of water transfer within the building structures and enhance the water-tightness of the safing slot sealing system.
In view of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a process for assembling a fire-, smoke-, sound- and/or water-proof system within a stick build exterior dynamic curtain wall fagade or in a curtain wall assembly from unitized panels.
Further, it is an object of the present invention to provide a process for installing a system within a curtain wall fagade that is full-scale ASTM E 2307 as well as ASTM E 1399 tested, to address the known code exception, to avoid letters and engineering judgments, and to secure and provide defined/tested architectural detail for this application, in particular, by providing a tested system for fire—as well as movement-safe architectural compartmentation and which makes it easier for the installers to build up the curtain wall fagade on the jobsite.
These and other objectives as they will become apparent from the ensuring description of the invention are solved by the present invention as described in the independent claims. The dependent claims pertain to preferred embodiments.